Mirror, Mirror
by The Anonymous Coward
Summary: They say if you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back. But what if, when it stares back, you see your own face? A resolution between Syaoran and his counterpart. Oneshot, SxS


_Disclaimer: Tsubasa is CLAMP's, not mine. If it were mine, I would have Syaoran as an annoying yet exuberant baseball-cap wearing ten year old, Sakura wearing her hair in a bizarre sideways pigtail, Fai having his eyes perpetually shut and squinty for no explicable reason, Makona shooting electricity and being unable to say anything other than his name, and Kurogane being the ridiculously arrogant rival with a cheerleading squad of his own. Obviously it's better that I not own it and it would be better still if I were heavily medicated if I ever came close._

**SPOILER WARNING: Though I do not follow canon strictly, there are likely spoilers for the latest issues of the manga (which as of this writing is about July 14, 2006). I haven't kept up with them too well, but I do know that there is a fair amount of overlap regarding some of the subject matter covered in both. If you're squeamish about such... well, you might not want to read.**

**Mirror, Mirror**

He had pictured the final battle as many things.

He had seen himself triumphant, destroying the enemy in a climatic battle. He hated to admit it, but the part of him who was still an eager boy, wowed by tales long ago of heroism and bravery as all boys were, hoped it would be like that.

He had seen himself failing, slain in battle, or worse yet, captured and forced to watch the results of his failure. Fei Wong capturing Sakura and taking her off to have her remaining feathers extracted. That was a vision he'd mostly woken up from in the middle of the night, trying to keep himself from screaming, and something he'd kept to himself.

He'd seen a far more realistic picture, with he and his comrades injured, perhaps one of them dying, but triumphant.

And in one of the more gut-wrenching scenarios, he'd even seen a phyrric victory, where the Time Witch's price turned out to be as horrific as possible, Sakura's memory wiped of him completely and irrevocably.

And there were dozens more, perhaps hundreds, that were variants of these, or some compromise between these, or different entirely. He thought he'd covered every possible scenario. A protective measure, Syaoran said to himself, should the worst occur and he be unlucky enough to live to regret it.

But he never thought it would end up like this.

Namely, with him staring at his own face. Granted, he'd done this many times in battle before. That's what having a doppelganger working for the enemy tends to do, after all - the nature of such things usually results in numerous battles and several bouts of mistaken identity between friend and foe alike, after all. However, this was different. Not only were their faces two inches away from one another, but there was no fighting. In fact, it was silent to a nearly surreal extent - an anticlimax, of sorts. Syaoran had never pictured it being so QUIET.

And he'd never expected he'd be seeing his trusty blade, Hein, shoved through the duplicate's abdomen and lower chest, covered in the blood that was his yet not, impaling him straight through the back, a sickly crimson covering the once-prestine steel. Or, perhaps more accurately, he never expected that it would not be his hand and deed which brought about this slightly surreal (yet too terribly real) state, but that of the one whose body and life were hanging on his sword.

The two stared at each other; Syaoran in disbelief, Not-Syaoran in desperation.

"...why..." Syaoran found himself uttering after a good five seconds had transpired after It. An event he couldn't quite bring himself around to articulate because he couldn't believe it himself, wondering if it was a trick to strike him down while he dropped his guard.

"...did I... impale myself... on your sword?" croaked out Not-Syaoran, staring into Syaoran's eyes with that same slightly crazed look he'd always had, but with a glassy glaze as the massive blood loss took it's toll. The end wouldn't be long coming. Not that Not-Syaoran had been thinking very much of longevity when he not only dropped his guard, but actively threw himself on Syaoran's sword, allowing the blade to pierce straight through him.

Syaoran could only mutely nod at his doppelganger. The small part in the back of his mind, that which looked at everything around him calmly, as though he were merely reading about this or watching it instead of being immersed in the horror of it all, noted that many of the philosophers he'd studied with his father in their archaeological digs would likely kill for such an existential experience. Right now, he'd gladly give it to them.

"...wanted..." A nasty cough, blood. Massive internal damage - as if there were any question, as being impaled in the vital organs tends to do that. "...wanted..." said the doppelganger again, "...to... break the cycle... save... Sakura... stop Fei Wong..." Another hacking cough.

"...save Sakura?" Syaoran inquired, his voice having a faint tone of disbelief, as though what was happening was a dream. He'd slain many monsters before, and men no better than monsters, but this was different in ways that he would never be able to describe, even many years after the adventure had ended.

A series of nods, the doppelganger's body rapidly becoming overcome with shakes as his body futilely tried to compensate for the fatal damage. "...yes... talked... to her... think... I love her..." His gaze flicked upwards to match Syaoran's, glassy, slightly mad visage matching disbelieving one. "...maybe... we're not so different... after all..."

Another series of hacking coughs. "...never really wanted... to go through with this. Only way to be free of... Wong's control." A gasp, gurgling as though blood were filling up some vital cavities within him, and they probably were. "You've got to hurry. You don't have long..." he forced himself to say. "...Sakura... probably won't survive the ritual. You've got to stop--" A cascade of coughs ended the sentence. Head bowed, he continued to speak. "...you've got questions." the Not-Syaoran said. "If you're going to ask them..." Now would be a good time, he implied, not bothering to waste his waning strength on such superfluous words.

"...which one of us..." Syaoran finally summoned up the courage to ask The Question, one that had been plaguing him for far too long on this journey.

"...the real one?..." Not-Syaoran smiled, that bloody smile full of pain and anguish, that were it not for a fluke of fate he might be wearing right now instead of this double. "...not sure." he croaked. "...Fei Wong's mind games... can't be trusted... might be... that... neither of us were."

Syaoran opened his mouth to ask a question.

But it was too late, as the double's face began to slacken. "...remember... hit him... in the heart... all your might. Lots... depending on you..." His gaze became even more glassy as his strength ebbed, spilling out onto the floor of this God-forsaken hellhole in which they'd dueled. "...favor?..." he asked, croaked, as though every word took enough effort to be like pushing a boulder might be had he not a massive shaft of enchanted steel going clean through him.

"...yes?" Syaoran asked, a slight nod. He wasn't sure he'd grant this favor... but all things considered, he owed it to him to at least listen. The act of this doppelganger, this Not-Syaoran, may well have saved his life. The two were evenly matched - too evenly matched. The odds were truly fifty fifty, and had he not forfeited his life, there would have been as much chance as winning or losing a coin flip as to whether or not he'd go on to destroy Fei Wong Reed, or bleed out in this dank chamber, never again to see Sakura.

"...tell her... loved her..." The doppelganger coughed, eyes widening, as though he could see something that only his eyes could perceive. "...good... luck..."

A loud, hard cough, his entire body shaking. Some more blood out of his mouth, this time much more than before, splashing on Syaoran's hands.

And then he was still.

He stared at the impaled copy in front of him for a full half-minute. He'd likely have stared longer, had Kurogane and Fai not finally arrived.

"Kid," said Kurogane, roughly. They didn't have time for this. No reply.

"Syaoran." Fai more solidly, yet more gently, approaching the teen from behind, hand reaching out to lay on his comrade's shoulder. "Right now we're running out of time. We've got to go."

A mute nod, as Syaoran's reverie was abruptly broken by the wizard's words. He closed his eyes, pointing Hein down, determined not to look at the final, fatal result of the impalement, allowing gravity to free the blade of the corpse. He heard a loud thud and a slightly meaty splosh, telling him it was over - and telling him that despite the dubious yet disturbingly thorough education he'd received in internal anatomy from his prodigious use of his blade during this quest, he really, really didn't want to have a refresher course this time.

A deep breath. "I'm OK. Let's go."

Kurogane and Fai nodded. They knew not to ask more of him. The trio began jogging, moving with considerable speed honed from battle and necessity.

Some days later, when it was all over and the fuss of returning to Clow had died down, and Sakura and Syaoran were alone, Syaoran's emotional guard slipped, and the horror of it all hit him like a pack of stampeding bulls, and with about as much gentleness. He broke down and cried, shaking. It was not like the tears he shed when Sakura woke so long ago not remembering him at all - or anything else for that matter. Those were deep, quietly painful, and the worst he'd ever felt in his life. Though the Not-Syaoran was not innocent, Syaoran knew that much, the sheer shock, combined confused guilt and the seemingly foolish, though completely and deceptively natural, worries that he was nothing more than a copy, finally broke through the emotional dam he'd spent so much energy creating for his princess. Sakura pulled him into her lap and comforted him as he wailed out his heart, for both this and for everything else on their journey as this undid much of the silent resolve that Syaoran had built up so stoically, to try to bear every burden for his princess and never show how much agony it was truly causing him.

She held her knight and guardian close, gently reassuring him that it didn't matter whether he came first, the copy came first, or neither, that he was still HER Syaoran, that only HE saved her, and that only HE captured her heart. And some of the injuries of his soul, those he'd hidden from the group, but as real as any gash or stab wound, finally began to heal under the gentle touch of his best friend and more.

But at the time, with the fate of the many worlds they'd been to hanging in the balance, Syaoran had no knowledge of this outcome. He did know, however, that if he didn't act now, Sakura would almost certainly die, and everything from here to Clow and beyond would either be conquered or a smoldering crater.

So the brown-haired knight dragged his thoughts away from this entirely. Giving one last split-second gaze to the shockingly red figure behind them, all that remained of his doppelganger, the Not-Syaoran (had he ever had a real name, he asked himself? He didn't know, and now never would), he ran through the corridors alongside the wizard and ninja who'd accompanied him on this long journey, the final hour of their quest at hand.

_Woo. Many thanks to those who bothered to read and review my last story, 'Naive - Not Stupid', which had the dash in its name inexplicably eaten by the programs. I was kind of surprised that everyone thought it was sad, though - it was kind of intended to be somewhat optimistic! Anyway, I'm glad people liked it, and I'll probably be posting a couple follow-ups, probably two different possible outcomes - possibly one as an extra chapter - but I thought this might be a good thing to put up first because it was so different._

_Anyway, as for this story, the idea came to me for a 'fic I'll probably never have the patience to actually write, and it seemed oddly appropriate that the double Syaoran might end up sacrificing himself to save Sakura, keep everything from being either taken over or blown to bits, and in general be a hero. The doppelganger idea is presented pretty well thus far by CLAMP, but there hasn't been a whole lot to see yet, unfortunately, except the last few chapters, and we have yet to see how that'll turn out. I hope that they manage to use it for all it's worth._

_In any case, dump all comments, criticism and flames to the review box. The reviews last time are probably what encouraged me to write this up. Surprising what an ego boost they can be. Thanks!_


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